Links for January 3rd 2010 through January 4th 2010:

• Self-Proclaimed Social Media Gurus on Twitter Multiplying Like Rabbits [B.L. Ochman’s blog] – There are now 15,740 self-proclaimed social media gurus on Twitter! Don’t be one of them.
• Ban This Game! – Silly but simple flash game exploring the “logic” of the Australian government’s proposed internet censorship regime.
• Talks from Media140 Sydney 2009 – Real-Time Web on Journalism and Media – A bunch of recorded talks from Media 140 in Sydney last November, from a great range of speakers as diverse as Jay Rosen and Malcolm Turnbull. I’ll be speaking at Media 140 Perth on February 25, so I’m brushing up on past Media 140s to get a feel for the style.
• ‘Avatar’ tops $1 billion at worldwide box office [Variety] – “Twentieth Century Fox and James Cameron’s “Avatar” rang in the New Year with an estimated worldwide cume of $[US]1 billion through Sunday, becoming the fourth highest grosser of all time. Domestic cume was $352.1 million, including a weekend take of $68.3 million, the best gross ever for a film in its third weekend. Overseas, the pic’s cume through Sunday was $670.2 million.”
• We All Live In Public Now. Get Used To It. [TechCrunch] – If we start from the premise that everything we do online is public, and then ask “how do I make this private” for specific bits and pieces, it’s more likely privacy will actually exist: “As the Web becomes more social, privacy becomes harder and harder to come by. People are over-sharing on Facebook and Twitter, broadcasting their whereabouts every ten steps on Foursquare and Gowalla, and uploading photos and videos of their most private moments to the Web for all to see. It’s easy to say that privacy is dead, we all live in public now, and just deal with it. But things are a bit more complicated. It used to be that we lived in private and chose to make parts of our lives public. Now that is being turned on its head. […] Public is the new default.”
• Web 2.0 Suicide Machine – Meet your Real Neighbours again! – Sign out forever! – Had enough of being part of social media? Kill all your web 2.0 profiles here (disclaimer: this really does delete your profiles … forever!).